THE DOMESTIC DUCK. — Ducks cannot be kept to advantage unless 
they can have access to water. This need not be in large quantities. 
A tub, holding a few gallons, set in the ground, and daily renewed, an- 
swering for a large flock. They arc gross feeders, and excellent “snap- 
pers up of unconsidered trifles.” Nothing conics amiss to them : green 
boiled vegetables, the waste of the kitchen, meal of all sorts made into 
paste, grains, bread, animal substances, worms, slugs and snails, insects 
and their larvae, are all accepted with eagerness. Their appetite is not 
fastidious; in fact, to parody the line of a song, “they eat all that is 
luscious, eat all that they can,” and seem determined to reward their 
owner by keeping themselves in first-rate condition, if the chance of so 
doing is afforded them. They never need cramming — give them enough 
and they will cram themselves; yet they have their requirements and 
ways of their own, which must bo conceded. Confinement will not do 
for them : a paddock, an orchard, a green lane, and a pond ; a farm- 
yard, with barns and water ; a common, smooth and level, with a sheet 
of water, abounding in the season with tadpoles and the larval of aqua- 
tic insects, — these are the localities in which the duck delights, and in 
such they are kept at little expense. They traverse the green sward in 
262 DOMESTIC AH1MAL8. 
key, is necessary ; for, actuated by a strange jealousy, the male will 
break all the eggs if he discovers them ; and this feeling actuates our 
domestic birds, insomuch that the female, during incubation, must be 
placed in such security as to prevent the access of the male to the nest. 
Eggs, grayish white ; period of incubation, from twenty-seven to thirty 
days. 
UU6K OR BRAZILIAN DUOK8. 
